I'm holed up in my office when I hear their rising voices.
Now I don't speak Polish, but I do speak panic, and from the tone of what they're saying, I suspect there's trouble afoot.
As I hear the slap of flip-flops barreling down the hallway, I think to myself, "Whatever this is can't be good."
To backtrack, I spend every Friday from 11-2 hiding in my office when our cleaning ladies come. Mind you, this is the newer service, as we fired the old team due to theft. Also, I realize in an economy like this, weekly maid service is an extravagance, but Fletch and I made a deal. As long as I'm working on a project, I'm allowed to outsource our housekeeping. I'm currently knee-deep in two books, getting ahead on my monthly Tribune column, contributing to an anthology for the Humane Society, and preparing a speech for an event next month, so I'd say my dance card is full in regard to work.
(The fact that I was less "writing" in my office and more "watching The Real Housewives of New York" is really beside the point.)
(Seriously? This season? OMG!)
Anyway, one of the ladies is calling "Excuse! Excuse!" to which my Pavlovian response is to fork over a check and a generous tip, which is really kind of a pain in the ass when trying to navigate a crowd. Common sense kicks in and I realize they've only been here fifteen minutes and can't possibly be done.
At this point it occurs to me that neither of the ladies has ever actually said anything to me except for "excuse." (Fletch told me once when he was here and I wasn't, one of the gals held a cell phone to his head and said, "Ask boss," when he inquired if they could fold a couple of baskets of laundry. I hate that I missed it.)
Before I continue, I must note that I'm absolutely enamored with any Eastern European accent having been raised on a steady diet of Bullwinkle. (I think that's why I'm such a fan of spa services. Every hotel esthetician I ever met was ex-Soviet bloc and sounded just like Natasha Fatale.) So, since this cleaning team started, I've been plotting to find a way to get one of them to say "moose and squirrel" but have yet to find a way to work it into conversation, particularly as conversation at this point has been fairly one-note.
(Yes, I understand exactly why this makes me a jackass. No need to email me.)
I open my door and find one of the ladies in what can best be described as a state. "Do you want me?" I ask. "Is something wrong? Can I help?" I figure whatever the problem is, I can fix it. If someone hurt herself, I can grab our first aid kit, call 911, or do an ER run. If something broke, I can glue it back together. If they're simply appalled at how dirty the floors got while I was at SXSW and Fletch was in charge of the house, I can give them more money.
She replies to my line of questioning by saying the one thing that doesn't have a readily apparent solution.
"The shit is small."
"I'm sorry?" I ask. "The shit is small?" I repeat myself a couple of times while I try to work it all out.
She nods emphatically and points in the direction of the master bedroom at the opposite end of the hallway. "The shit is small."
As we both rush back down the hallway, my head races with grim possibilities.
Where did the small shit come from?
And where is the small shit now?
Is the small shit on my duvet? That's not such a big deal because I can wash it.
Is the small shit on my linen chair? Um, more problematic, because I'm not sure how to clean that fabric. Scrub brush?
Oh, God, please tell me there's no small shit on my prized Persian rug with the delicate swirls of celery and cerulean blue woven throughout the magenta wool.
Wait, is this like the time one of our cats barfed in the cleaning lady's shoe, only a million times more gross?
Or did Loki deposit another "I got nervous" bomb somewhere terribly inopportune?
Did something go horribly awry in Fletch's bathroom due to my cavalier attitude toward using an antique banana in his smoothie yesterday?
I get to the master bedroom expecting chaos... carnage... destruction... or at the very least, a diminutive pile of something steaming.
Instead I find that I've laid out the wrong bedding, accidentally setting out a Queen set instead of King and for the better part of five minutes, they've been attempting to wrestle them on to the bed.
Oh... I get it.
The sheet is small.
I start to laugh, then I apologize profusely, swapping out Queens for Kings. I head back to my office, where I spend the next two hours and forty five minutes giggling, as I'm unable to stop delighting in the phraseology of the shit being small.
And then it occurs to me... this probably why our old cleaning ladies stole from us.
Sheet.
